Video: 'CBS Evening News July 19, 1990 Part 1' (Nixon library at 2:27)

(Thursday, July 19, 1990, pre-ceremony introductions underway by 10:18 a.m. PDT, Bush spoke at 10:55 a.m. PDT) — Almost 16 years after he resigned the presidency in disgrace, Richard M. Nixon was hailed today as a statesman and a peacemaker as he presided over the dedication of the $21 million Nixon Library and Birthplace (since re-designated the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum) in Yorba Linda, California (click here to watch today’s complete ceremony).

President George H.W. Bush and former presidents Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan spoke in praise of their 77-year-old Republican colleague, for whom today was a high point in a long, slow process of political rehabilitation.

Former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, sent Nixon a hand-written note declining his invitation on the grounds of a prior commitment; Nixon had skipped the opening of the Carter Library in Atlanta.

No one mentioned Nixon’s resignation, which stands alone in the annals of the White House, and only Bush mentioned the Watergate scandal that prompted it.

Nixon himself voiced no bitterness, commenting with fatalism of his electoral career, “Won some, lost some, all interesting.” He said he had “many memories, some of them good, some of them not so good.”